Russet
by VickyVicarious
Summary: It was autumn, and the leaves were falling down again.


This fic was written for a challenge by the user Incognito from the DG Forum. The prompt was October and the challenge was to find the beauty _or_ ugliness of the season (autumn, as I live in the Northern hemisphere). I could choose any character or pairing, and the word limit was 800. I did exceed that by thirty words, though. This was also due by last Halloween; I did have it done by then but various things happened and I forgot all about writing it until very recently.

The Hogwarts ghosts have always been presented as being rather jolly, with the exceptions of the Grey Lady and the Bloody Baron. Still, I can't imagine that they felt happy all the time, and personally I've always found the thought of that sort of existence horrifying. Knowing everyone will die eventually, and yet you will still remain with not even the _option _of ending your existence - I shudder at the thought. At least the ghosts could count on others of their kind being around, and the portraits if nothing interfered. Tom Riddle though, had he truly achieved immortality, may have regretted it a few centuries later. But back to this story - the above musings on ghosts are the only explanation I can give should readers find Sir Nicholas terribly out of character.

Finally, this oneshot is set years after the finale. I hint at this several times during the story, but I thought I might as well go ahead and say it flat out. Enjoy.

* * *

The leaves were russet and golden as they fell through the air, gently twirling in the breeze to land on the browning grass. The trees they fell from looked more and more like skeletons every day, and the dry leaves crunched underfoot with every step.

That had always been his favorite part of autumn: the steady _crunch, crunch_. He had used to walk outside on his own in the chill wind that promised harsh winters ahead, watching the leaves under his feet: _crunch, crunch_.

He didn't do that anymore. It was, had long been, impossible and often years went by without him even glancing out a window at the great piles of leaves Hagrid annually raked up. Younger students sometimes ran and leapt into them, shrieking gleefully, though the inevitable discovery that the lower layers of leaves were beginning to rot, or were home to slugs and the like, usually drove them off after a bit. He heard them sometimes, and paused to listen, but in the end he had never leapt into leaves himself so the laughter had little effect on him. He'd just walked in them: quiet but for the _crunch, crunch_ with the trees turning skeletal and the wind blowing.

This year was a quiet year, and there were no children playing in the leaf-piles. In fact Hagrid hadn't even managed to get around to raking some places yet, so he made the effort today and pushed himself outside the protective castle walls for the first time in some forty years.

It was silent; he couldn't even hear the wind, though he saw the slightest hints of it twirling one or two crimson leaves to the dirt. In this silence he made his way to the grounds' newest addition, slipping noiselessly past the creaky iron gate and into the graveyard.

Each headstone was white, and the freshly overturned earth in some places smelled of mold and worms and the sorts of things that some child might find inside a leaf-pile. There was only one tree in the graveyard, a great arching oak with many branches like fingers pointing accusations at the cloudy sky. They were almost all bare; less than ten leaves still clung on, and two of those trembled as the wind began to pick up and make itself known again.

He made his way around the graves carefully until he reached the center of the graveyard. The air was crisp enough to almost make his lungs burn if they could and the sky was not quite stormy, not quite bright. The leaves skittered across the ground, rolling with the wind until they were caught against a headstone or the iron bars of the fence, where they continued to twitch. He watched them move. Though there weren't too many, the leaves were scattered just plentifully enough that if one were careful where they stepped, they could produce a steady _crunch, crunch_ all the way round the resting dead.

He stayed there for a long time, two full days as the sun rose and set red like fire and the ground began to crackle with first frost. The leaves kept whispering their way across the ground and falling from the tree until there was only one left, and then that fell too, drifting and looping and dropping right through him to touch the ground underneath.

He rested a foot over it; stepped down.

_Crunch_.

He lifted his foot; the leaf was intact as before, red-gold with a dark brown stem and contrasting brightly against the pale dirt baked hard with cold. It was entirely delicate and entirely unharmed.

At the gate stood Hagrid, rake in hand, looking bewildered and slightly ashamed. He pushed the gate open with a creak and walked forward: _crunch, crunch_. His feet were large enough to crush a leaf with every step where someone else would have had to try. His scarf was red and gold like the leaves and his coat dark brown like the tree; his hair and beard graying like the frost glinting on the ground.

With a small sigh, Nicholas floated forward, toes just inches over the leaves and frosted blades of dying grass. He acknowledged Hagrid with a nod and drifted on over the lake, occasional water droplets arcing through his shoes. He drifted through the thick castle walls without even a last glance at the cloudy sky or the broken world of dead things so beautiful and quiet.

He emerged from the thick stone into a busy fireplace, students laughing and warming their fingers in front of it. As he passed through the flames, his cold caused them to flicker and nearly die, and Nicholas moved on quickly.

Heading deeper and deeper into the castle, he closed his eyes and saw grey frost; brilliant leaves drifting down. He heard his feet moving through them, _crunch, crunch_.

He was so _tired_, but nothing ever ended and this–

This was as close as he could get to dreaming.


End file.
